Deregulating the FCC
Oh yikes, too many Tweets — I don’t know where to start, here!
It absolutely could work just like the grocery store or the elevator (where people behave in an organized way without anyone there policing them). If device manufacturers wanted to start market hopping, that would be a super sweet side effect, but I’m not sure it needs to happen.
The point of the article was that there’s a lot of under-utilized bandwidth out there right now that people could be using if the big players hadn’t cornered the market, so I would argue that at least some of what you fear (crowding out competitors) has already happened through the regulations that should be providing public good.
Moreover, there are plenty of laws and norms related to infringing on another’s right to a space. As a business, I would piss off potential customers AND get sued if I started trying to crowd out the spectrum. Wouldn’t be my first choice in how to improve market share.
That said, whenever you pass huge new regulation or deregulate in a huge way, there’s going to be a period of confusion and adjustment where the attacks on competition you fear still might happen. If we want to talk practicality, we can lessen these incidents (and therefore pain to the average consumer) by lengthening the period of adjustment: Slowly allow more companies in the space and eventually reach a point where you don’t need the FCC anymore.
It took 100 years (from the Radio Act of 1912) to get to the point where we noticed corporations have bought themselves airwaves with the purpose of denying others use. No reason we can’t take 25 or 50 years to get back. Just call me a progressive libertarian. =)
Also, I hate TweetDeck right now.
